The Beggar Patricians
'''The Beggar Patricians '''or the "Dustbin Dukes" is a nickname given to a group of ennobled aristocrats and upper-class families who, due to either the economic collapse of 1008KF or the revolutionary actions of the Harding Government, found themselves reduced to total poverty. Often unwilling or unable to take regular employment, they became an enduring symbol of the Harding Era, often featuring in newspaper cartoons and popular jokes. Origins Under Empress Isabella I, the Kymurian social strata had become somewhat top-heavy. To maintain the stability and security of both her position and that of the Empire at large, she relied heavily upon "bribing" ambitious families and individuals with grants of nobility, leading to some 13,000 new individual titles in all. Whereas previous monarchs had given out hereditary peerages slowly and only to individuals, Isabella always ensured that the entirely of the recipients family received corresponding titles. The greatest example of this is that of the family of General Harold Mawham, who upon being made military governor of Saffira, revived the title of Duke. His 5 (relatively poor) brothers received the title of Marquess, their wives Marchioness, his aunts and uncles were made Baronesses and Barons respectively, his aged mother was made a Grandee, and some 24 others with increasingly tenuous connections to Mawham himself were made either Knights of the Realm or Marquesses in their own right. Since each title-holder generally had a right to claim some expenses of the Imperial Purse, Royal finances were ruinously purged as Isabella frittered out titles with increasing frequency. The Noble Council, now packed with "paper" aristocrats, bestowed the title of "The Charitable" upon her. When the Empress succumbed to a cancer of the womb in 1005KF, her son Tyenn assumed power and ceased to grant any further titles. This left an over inflated class of aristocrats without the proper ability to care for or maintain their finances, nor with any ancestral estates to hold as collateral. When in 1009KF, the economy went into meltdown, these families were left penniless, and turned out onto the streets in droves. When Premier Harding took power in 1019KF, he was able to stabilise the economy somewhat, though part of his solution lay in forcibly seizing the land, property or money of still wealthy aristocrats. This provided a quick boost of cash for government coffers, but devastated large regions of the countryside, as landowners' farms and estates fell into ruin, causing a shortage of food and supplies in the cities. By 1027KF, some 8,000 "new" aristocrats were living in absolute poverty, whilst some 4,000 "real" aristocrats were as well. Reaction Generally, other aristocrats were sympathetic to those from fallen from "old money," taking them in and often keeping up their household and staff. Old Money aristocrats displaced by the Harding Government were always kept in good levels of wealth by friends and benefactors in solidarity against the "revolutionary" administration. The response from the middle classes was total ridicule. The Beggar Patricians were often harassed in the streets by professional men, and their pleas for alms were made mockery of in the papers. Local Angelican churches took in fallen nobles wherever they could, but often it was seen as beneath the dignity of the gentry to accept such charity. The countryside poor made a great effort to assist their fallen gentry. A good deal of palatial estates became "Free Cooperatives," in which the countryside workers continued to upkeep the farms and plantations, while the local gentry continued to keep their staff, live in their mansions and direct the labourers. The difference was that the output of the land was shared according to an agreement between the labourers and the gentry, since there was no cash available to pay wages with. Labourers were permitted to live in their cottages rent free if they had no permanency agreement. Household staff received a smaller cut of the produce but were permitted to live in the mansions and received pay in valuable goods held within the property. This system carries on to the present day on some estates. The urban poor were generally kind. The ability of the impoverished nobles to maintain a steady and calm, even cheerful demeanour whilst homeless or in terrible poverty quickly warmed them to poor locals. In many cities, working class women pooled parts of their money into a weekly fund to ensure that any sufficiently popular and "decent" aristocrat did not have to work for a living (though many of them never considered that option.). Indeed, many of the urban working class, whilst apathetic to the poverty of the Dustbin Dukes, found it unthinkable that they should work alongside each other, seeing it as either an insult to the noble or to themselves. When in 1023KF, Lord Gerald Felix, 9th Baron Felix, found a job in a Krahull dockyard, the entirety of the local conglomerate of trade unions threatened a general strike unless he was either fired and given a stipend or made a managing-director of the company. When asked about this, the union chairman replied that his men were "not agrarianists" and that it "went against all conventions of this country that a titled man should be in such a condition through, what we can see to be, no fault of his own." In general, both agrarianists and anarchists were amused by the situation but disgusted by the reactions of ordinary people. They urged for the impoverished nobles to be left to starve, and some agrarianist unions hunted down and murdered the now unprotected gentility. There were several incidents of mobs of agrarianists and more conservative citizens fighting for custody of fallen nobles both in the streets and in the magistrates' courts. Union of Dispossessed Gentility In 1014KF, Lord Henry Rothern, 3rd Marquess of County Loverna, having lost his estates and unable to find a benefactor, formed the "Union of Dispossessed Gentility" in Saffira. This originally began as a charity, but quickly morphed into an organised crime gang. It was mainly populated by the extended families of "new" aristocrats, most of whom had never been particularly wealthy to begin with, and to this day in Saffira, various descendants of the gang, known as "Gentlys" still operate, their distinctive top hats and knee britches giving them away. Restoration One of the first actions of Empress Theodora was to restore any fallen "old" aristocrat to their estates or wealth, thus stabilising the situation. Over time she restored roughly 40% of her mothers title grants that had been issued on the grounds of honour, valiancy or loyalty, but did not extend them to the recipients families.